Welcome to my first blog for catch and release ladies and gents.  In this feature and features in the future I will try and share my experiences with yourselves whilst hopefully passing on some tips and giving you food for thought of how you can put that extra fish or two on the bank yourselves.  I just want to quickly mention that I will name some companies within the fishing trade in my articles but don’t berate me for this as businesses want something in return for their generosity of sponsoring me. Through a last minute decision that the kids didn’t want to go out with dad and instead go to the tall ship regatta in Falmouth with friends I was given a window to get the rods out. A few phone calls later and we were going to Snails Lake for Tom’s birthday, a lake I have only fished  twice before so it is still a learning curve as far as how the carp react to bait, pressure and so on.  As this was a social for Tom’s birthday the aim was to find two swims close together that we also thought would be good for a carp or two.  We had a quick scout around and found two swims which gave us the social aspect and as a bonus we both felt there were carp in the area. I will just bring up the scout around the lake bit I mentioned in the last sentence as it still amazes me how many people turn up to a lake and already have a choice of swim in their head and if it is free they will go straight in it without checking the rest of the lake for signs of carp. So I suppose my first piece of advice I would like to pass on is to go to the lake with an open mind, spend some time looking for signs of fish and then make your decision from there.  I know this is like telling some, how to suck eggs but so many people still don’t do it. Not my usual style but we set up the bivvies’ first as it looked like rain and then set about having a quick lead around the swim.  I didn’t want to disturb the swim too much as I have learnt from previous sessions that the carp in Snails do not like a lot of commotion in the swim.  After about 10 minutes I had found two lovely areas one at 28 yds which was on gravel in 3ft of water right on the edge of a drop off to 4.5ft  and the other at 16 yds which was a fairly clean spot with a bit of gravel in amongst heavy chod and weed in 4.5ft. I chose to fish a hinged stiff rig with a pop up over a bed of pellet and boilie on the fairly clean spot in amongst the chod and weed and a basic complicated rig on the top of the shelf.  I have inserted a photo to show the hinged stiff rig I used and more specifically the baiting situation I was using.   I am a great believer that the more you can do to confuse the carp as they sift through your bait the greater the chance of a pick-up.   You can see in the photo that I have two different colours of boilie (which the bait company I consult for actually do in one bag) and there are two different sizes of boilie (12mm and 16mm) over a bed of pellet.  All of this combination together is what (in my opinion) helps confuse the carp that little bit more so they find it harder to work out what is what. As I said before the rod I was fishing on the top of the drop off had a basic complicated rig with an 18mm Contrast rig neutral hook bait.  A round stringer was tied around this and it was fished over a spread of different sized boilies and corn.  The rig I won’t go into as this is one that I will cover in more detail in the future but I will give a quick low down on the rig neutral. This a concept that Mr Renyard came up with and it works perfectly. Basically it is a bottom bait that has enough cork in it to negate the weight of the hook. The beauty of it is it still acts like a bottom bait and doesn’t waft about but when a carp sucks around your bait it is just that bit more buoyant than the rest and is the first to shoot up into the mouth, this concept impressed me anyway. By now it was 20.30 in the evening and with the rods sorted it was time for some food and a catch up with Tom.  Apart from a few liners nothing happen during the night but Tom did manage to put a birthday fish on the bank in the morning, happy days. Later that afternoon it cleared a bit so I put a few floaters out and from nowhere every floater eating bird in the Collumpton area turned up, that was the floater fishing out the window then.  I decided to put a couple of spods of crushed boilie out over each rod and re –did the ledge rod ready for the night ahead. After all that hard work I suddenly felt the need to have a little siesta so the batteries were fully charged ready for the night of hauling ahead of me (cough).  Just as I had gone into the land of nod the rod with the pop up on which had been left alone since the night before suddenly burst into life.    After a spirited battle this cracking mirror rolled over the cord and I was a happy man.  Nothing more happened to my rods that night which surprised me a little as there were signs of carp moving around the swim but that’s fishing for you. Tom managed another mid double on the Sunday morning just before we packed up so all in all not a bad session.  It was a very enjoyable social and a little bit more of the Snails Lake puzzle was pieced together.  I think the main thing I will change on future sessions there will be to be a bit more mobile.   Well that is me done for this feature but I hope you enjoy it and even more importantly I hope you might have picked up a tip or two.   Until the next feature stay safe and remember to enjoy it all along the way. Arron Fisher